1. Field
Embodiments described herein relate to composing a melody or song.
2. Background
When composing a song, it is challenging to determine where to add notes and where to leave empty space between notes. This process is simplified by applying a rhythm to the melody. Rhythm is defined as “movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements.”
Playing notes on a piano, guitar, keyboard, or the like usually requires the musician to adhere to a specific rhythm, such as playing a note on every beat, playing a note on every other beat, etc. Adherence to the rhythm is important because playing a note at the wrong time will violate the rhythm of the song and will result in an unpleasant sound (the song will sound incorrect/off-beat, like the musician made a mistake), while playing on the rhythm would typically result in “expected” and pleasant timing (the song will sound correct/on-beat).
Typically, Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) (such as, Ableton® Live, Apple® Logic, GarageBand®, FruityLoops, Pro Tools®, and the like) create uniform grids by dividing a measure into beats and beats into smaller sections, and display these grids to help guide a user as to where in the grid to insert a note “correctly” in relation to the beat. When preforming the aforementioned division, these DAWs assume that a given melody or song is regular (i.e., has a regular beat or rhythm throughout). As a result, in those DAWs, the distance between blocks is always uniform.
However, the majority of today's popular music does not follow a uniform rhythm. Even songs that have a regular repetitive pattern (for example, a Pop, Electro/Dance, or Hip-Hop song) may have instruments that play irregular rhythms, such as a bass guitar. Furthermore, there are certain musical genres that contain more irregular rhythms than other genres (for example, Reggae, Jazz, Funk, etc.). For example, a modern 2014 hit song called “Rude” by the band called “Magic!” follows a similar rhythm to any traditional Reggae track, and thus can be identified as a Reggae song simply by listening to its rhythm.
When composing such music, a musician who follows the uniform grid division provided by these DAWs, may incorrectly insert notes in parts of the song that violate the rhythm. This results in a composition that is out of rhythm and hence does not sound pleasant.